I recently carried out an experiment involving my decades-long caffeine consumption. I have ingested caffeine, mostly in the form of coffee, since my twenties. My average daily intake of six or seven cups of strong-brewed coffee has caused problems. In this column, I’ll offer observations on caffeine, and in the next I’ll describe my attempt to kick my habit.
Medical Background
First, some background information, culled from “Caffeine Use Disorder: A Comprehensive Review and Research Agenda,” by behavioral scientist Roland Griffiths and others. Caffeine is the most widely used drug in the world. Nine out of 10 adult Americans consume it on a regular basis. The average daily dose of caffeine is 200 milligrams, roughly what you get from two cups of coffee, or five caffeinated soft drinks.
Regular consumption leads to tolerance, meaning that larger doses are required to achieve positive effects. Cessation leads to withdrawal symptoms, including “headache, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, and dysphoric mood.” Many people find it hard to quit caffeine even when it compromises their physical and mental health, according to Griffiths et al. They state that “caffeine dependence is a clinically meaningful disorder that affects a nontrivial proportion of caffeine users.”
Personal Background
Until my recent experiment, I have had caffeine pretty much every day for 40 years, and my intake has gradually increased. On a typical day, I have a four-to-five-cup pot right after waking and another cup or two in the afternoon. Coffee gives me a surge of energy that jump starts my day. I get a lot of writing done while drinking those first few cups. Coffee boosts my mood, too. It fills me with can-do euphoria.
But it’s a dirty high. The excess energy often jams my mind, making thinking and writing harder, and as the day goes on I get anxious, jittery, glum, impatient, and irritable. Over the past couple of years, these negative effects have increased, which is why I wanted to cut back or quit.
Short-Term Benefit, Long-Term Harm
Many people, I suspect, get short-term benefits from caffeine but pay an increasing price over the long term. This trend is true over the course of a day, and over years. That is, your baseline mood is lower — more glum and anxious — than it would have been if you’d never become a java junkie.
The pattern of short-term benefit versus long-term harm is probably true of all mood-altering drugs, legal and illegal. Antidepressants and other psychiatric medications help many people, especially initially. But their net effects over the long term are negative, and quitting the drugs may make you feel worse than you did to begin with.
I hoped that if I quit caffeine, my overall mood and energy level would rise, more than compensating for the loss of morning energy spikes. I would be a happier, nicer person, maybe even a better writer. When I quit drinking alcohol in 2009, my baseline mood and writing immediately improved.
Caffeine and Capitalism
Billions of people consume caffeine daily while remaining productive members of society, but productive in what sense? Caffeine transforms us into machines that perform tasks mechanically without reflecting much on their value. It makes us automatons, instruments for carrying out to-do lists.
Caffeine is the ideal drug for our hyper-capitalist culture, which venerates productivity, especially of wealth, over all other values. Caffeine is antithetical to mindfulness, that is, rose-smelling, cloud-watching, paying attention to things and people for their own sake. Caffeine fosters an impatience that erodes enjoyment of the best things in life, such as love, friendship, eating, exercise, and work itself.
My primary work for the past 35 years has been writing. It’s my spiritual path, my way of paying attention to the world. But when I am hyper-caffeinated, my writing feels compulsive rather than reflective.
Caffeine and Digital-Technology Addiction
We are addicted to information technologies as well as to caffeine, and the addictions are unhealthily symbiotic. Ideally, coffee gives me the energy and focus to get writing done. But my mental state often degrades into a distracted twitchiness that is bad for writing, but ideal for Internet surfing.
It is surely no coincidence that caffeine consumption and information-technology addiction are both endemic in our culture. The archetypal urban citizen hustles down a sidewalk staring at an iPhone in one hand and gripping a Starbucks coffee in the other.
That’s enough on why I wanted to stop consuming caffeine. In my next column, I’ll describe the results of my experiment.
John Horgan directs the Center for Science Writings, which is part of the College of Arts & Letters. This column is adapted from one on his Scientific American blog, “Cross-check.”
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